Friday was pretty kickass. Davened then tea and toast before beginning morning seder with Alex. We learned for 4 hours in the morning. We learned the parsha and then pirkei avot. His hebrew is pretty good. It was a good study sesh and i left feeling super inspired and satisfied.
After our learning i went back to my room and bought 15 litres of drinking water. Alex came with yogurt and fruit which also made me happy. I spent the afternoon watching the movie 'twelve monkeys.' it's not bad. But i wouldn't say it's brilliant. Though i do love seeing brad pitt in his earlier years. I then (bucket) showered and prepped for shabz. I completed the fence around the house so i would be able to carry around the compound. Though the property is shared with christian families who thought i was a bit nuts. But they should probably be used to nutty Jews by now.
I was also in a pickle about food for shabz. You see, the woman who cooks for me is part of the community and she was cooking everything for me before shabbat because she herself is shomeret shabbat. However, this doesn't extend to carrying on shabbat. Now i knew she was going to carry the food to me on shabz. So i went to her before shabbat and asked if i could take it all now so she wouldn't' have to carry on shabz and work. But she said no, that she brings to food to all the guests and became quite offended that i was trying to take away her job. So it seemed quite impossible without getting Alex (who was uncontactable) to explain the situation since her english wasn't great. I reconciled it as such, that halachically she is not Jewish. She may at some point go through a conversion ( the community is planning to convert by the end of this year) however even then it will be a conservative conversion and she will still be carrying on shabbat, since Alex the leader of the community also carries on shabbat even after his conversion. As such, i decided that pending further investigation and not wanting to offend her any more than i already had that i would simply accept the food that had been carried through the reshut ha'rabim on shabz.
Another question arose then about how on earth she was going to keep the food until my meals. Now i couldn't go asking and indeed she didn't like me being any where near her outdoor 'kitchen.' but it seemed pretty obvious to me that anything i would be eating would not have been refrigerated since i doubt that there is a single private fridge in the whole village. Any food that was cooked was put into like giant thermoses to keep warm until it was time for me to eat the next day. So she'd prepared me a bunch of boiled eggs, some tomato stew and some rice. I ate a little bit of it all but i'm still waiting for the salmonella to catch up with me. She also prepared me some watermelon which was delicious but i have no idea how hygienic or unhygienic the circumstances were when it was prepared. So expect a stomach complaint in the next 24 hours. Keeping track of what i was eating was easier in kumasi when nobody but myself was responsible for my food.
But back to shabbat. Friday evening i went to shule, we sang kabbalat shabbat with the children and a few adults. After that we taught the kids a tune to one of the shabbat prayers and i gave a short devar torah about shabbat.
We walked home but there was no Friday night dinner. Apparently they don't do that here and since i'd eaten at 4 i certainly wasn't hungry. So i read by the light outside and was in bed by 9pm.
Shule this morning was at 8.30am. The service is pretty standard expect that many of the tehillim (psalms) have been translated into the local language, twi, so they sing them in that language. Apart from that most of the service is in english except for shema and the amidah which is lead tby the chazan. They also called me up to read from the 'torah' - meaning a chumash in hebrew for the first 2 aliyot. But after that they switched back to reading the parsha in Twi. I found it amusing that the first time i read in front of a community is in west africa. But then again, i defiantly just read since my leining abilities are limited. After torah reading a gave another devar torah which was translated as i spoke by Alex.
After shule, i went home, read and napped until 5pm when we returned to shule for a shiur, given by myself. I gave a shiur on hilchot shabbat focusing on the laws of mukseh since i mentioned it to Alex in passing a couple of days ago and he had never heard of it. So i explained it to the community. After that there was some question and answer time, much of it coming from the kids and revolving around what they had been taught about jesus in school. It was difficult for me to answer since i don't know much of abut jesus of Christianity but it was important that we had these discussions b/c obviously it's hard for the kids to be Jewish in school surrounded by christians. After that i gave a small vort involving the parsha and pirkei avot and by this stage shabbat was out and we went outside to do havdala which they do in the carlebachian style so i felt right at home. As we walked back home through the banana plantations the kids sung eliyahu ha navi and it felt totally surreal that i was in a small isolated west african viillage.
Tonight we watched ghana play mali in the africa cup of nations. Ghana won 2:0. yay!
As for tomorrow i begin my trek to accra to collect my BFF. Super pumped. And with that, g'nite.
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